It's quite extraordinary that one of the largest car brands in the world never actually made a proper attempt to sell pickups in the US. Brands like Ford and Toyota sell hundreds of thousands of pickups in the US every year, but Volkswagen always stuck to passenger cars. This will finally change this year, because Volkswagen will launch the new car brand Scout.
Scout is a brand new car brand, but it is not a new name. In the 1960s and 1970s, the International Harvester brand sold an SUV called Scout. This old American brand has not existed for some time, but the brand rights came into the hands of Volkswagen during a takeover in 2020. The German brand saw this as an opportunity to establish a new American car brand.
This was already known, right?
Certainly. The announcement that Volkswagen was going to launch the model name Scout as a new car brand came in 2022. The news is that Scout will unveil the first model in the summer of 2024. That is a year later than planned, because we should have seen more of the new brand last year. This year we will receive more concrete information about the newest member.
Volkswagen understands very well that Americans prefer to buy a pickup from an American brand. That is why they are opening an innovation center in Michigan and the factory will be located in South Carolina. The brand also publishes cool videos with images of hardworking Americans, typical American views and cool one-liners.
We're pretty sure Scout's new models won't come to the Netherlands or Europe. Not through official channels, anyway. Something can probably be arranged for the enthusiasts through the gray import. Volkswagen has the Amarok for the Netherlands. This new pick-up was built with help from Ford, so you have a bit of an American pick-up on your doorstep.
Not quite American after all?
The development of the first two models is not entirely done in America. Scout receives help from the Austrian Magna Steyr to design the new platform. For example, this party has also been building the G-class for Mercedes since the end of the 1970s. So they know a thing or two about rugged off-roaders.
Scout talks about a 'newly designed fully electric platform' and the brand will not convert the platform of the ID.5, to name but a few. Specifications are not known. We don't know if the cars will be on a ladder chassis, for example. Scout does promise a lot of ground clearance, a lot of loading capacity and a large range. The car should be in showrooms in 2026.
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